Cummins: Major overhaul, upgrades for health system

Minister of Health and Wellness Senator Lisa Cummins on Monday announced a sweeping overhaul of the public healthcare system, with more than $300m earmarked from the $485.7m Budget for the ministry to upgrade facilities and improve patient outcomes.

The Leader of Government Business gave Senate lawmakers a glimpse of the government’s health systems strengthening drive at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) and across the island’s polyclinics.

Since taking office, Senator Cummins has visited all nine polyclinics and met with staff and health officials across the country, she said.

“I’ve had the opportunity to visit the district hospitals and to meet with the staff there, and even see the patients in those locations. Meeting the people who work in the labs, meeting the pharmacist, meeting the people who are part of the cogs of the wheel that keep the system moving. Everybody goes together.”

She highlighted the public’s top concerns, citing waiting times at polyclinics as the number one issue, followed by access to specialist care and surgical facilities — described by the minister as the biggest pain points for Barbadians.

Following her visits and investigations, Senator Cummins discovered that many Barbadians have not been getting regular health checks, placing them at higher risk.

“By the time they show up at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, they’re sicker, and so they spend longer times internal to the QEH hospital in tertiary care, which means that discharge times are extended.”

She further noted that a significant proportion of patients presenting to the Accident and Emergency Department do not require tertiary care.

“Twenty-four per cent of the persons who present in A and E do not need to be there, they’re neither an accident, neither are there an emergency. And so what ends up happening a lot of times is that in the absence of going to another facility, either a polyclinic, if it’s a 24-hour facility, or a private individual doctor, or waiting until the morning and going to the hospital. People go to the QEH.”

Reiterating the government’s plans for community healthcare, Senator Cummins said seven polyclinics will be refurbished, and two rebuilt.

“We started the process. Each polyclinic has outlined what it is they’re proposing to do. They’ve outlined what they’re expecting to have a full state-of-the-art 21st-century, forward-looking polyclinic to look like.”

Additionally, in the coming financial year which begins next month, at least three polyclinics will be outfitted with diagnostic equipment, “but to have diagnostics equipment in three polyclinics, potentially across the country, helps to take some of the pressure off of the emergency room and to make these polyclinics fit for purpose”.

She stressed that a modern healthcare system must incorporate every polyclinic and focus on patient-centred service.

“It begins with a complete re-engineering business process, re-engineering of the patient flow of a hospital and therefore… the ministry’s remit in this financial year is to effect health system transformation, not health sector. Health system transformation, looking at all of the constituent parts of the health system. And by the health system, I’m talking about what is in your community, what is in your polyclinic? What services can you get in your polyclinic, and when can you get them? And for what, for what purposes?”

Extended hours will also be resumed at the Maurice Byer and Randall Phillips polyclinics. Currently, the Winston Scott Polyclinic at Ladymeade, Jemmotts Lane, operates as a 24-hour facility, handling 49 per cent of cases that are subsequently transferred to the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

She revealed plans for the creation of a transformation committee: “How do we design patient flow?” Invoking the name of independent senator Dr Kenneth Connell, deputy dean of recruitment in the UWI Faculty of Medicine, she asked: “How do we have a system that allows for us to be able to identify who should and should not be where, who needs what, and from whom and at what level? How do we integrate with the public sector and with the private sector? How do we then work with the [private emergency clinics] Urgent Care and the FMHs and the Sandy Crests of the world to be able to develop to deliver services on an as-needed basis? How do we have additional capacity?”

Senator Cummins also provided an update on the new Geriatric Hospital under construction at Waterford, which is expected to open during the 2026–2027 financial year.

“They are fitting up the inside of that new geriatric hospital, and we’re going to see that opening during the course of this financial year as well.” She added: “Now again, with the Estimates runs. The financing for the new geriatric hospital began in financial year 2025 to 2026, you’re going to see it closing off in financial year 2026–2027. Government is about coherence, and it’s about continuum.”

Construction of the hospital began in 2023. 

(LG)